“Yes, Mac, several have,” Benson said quietly. “And I’m afraid we’ll be hearing from them soon.”
Into headquarters marched the doctor who had been called by John Braun just before he sank into the coma of death. The doctor’s face and lips were the color of ashes, but he was calm. It was, however, the calm of a brave man past all hope.
He went to the commissioner’s office.
The commissioner normally wouldn’t have been up for three hours yet, for it was half past four in the morning. But he had come down in a hurry at the report of the “snow man.” There are some things you can feel are terrible, even if they seem meaningless and fantastic at first. This was one of them. It called the commissioner to his duty.
“You attended Braun?” he repeated, to the ashen-faced physician. “I see. I meant to get in touch with you first thing in the morning. You have something to say to us?”
“I have,” said the doctor. His voice was like his face — perfectly composed, drained of all emotion. Even of terror. “Rather, I have something to show you.”
He took overcoat and suitcoat off. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it hang from his belt. Under that was a white undershirt, of the athletic type. But the commissioner, half rising from his chair in horror, didn’t look at the athletic shirt. He stared at the doctor’s arm.
The arm, from wrist to shoulder, seemed to have been turned to snow.
“Good heavens!” whispered the commissioner. “You, too—”
“I touched Braun, of course, in the pursuance of my examination,” the doctor said steadily. “I washed in the usual strong disinfectants. It seems they weren’t strong enough. I have what Braun died of.”
“You’ve seen other doctors? There is something you can do?”
“There is nothing on earth I can do,” said the doctor quietly. “Except to die! I think that will happen in about six hours. Evidently just a little of the white substance got on my hand. It took a long time to spread to the elbow — but a much shorter time to go to the shoulder. Now, if you look carefully, you can see it spread even as you watch.”
“There must be something, man—”
“I have kept my arm literally bathed in strong germicides. It hardly even slows the stuff! I have kept scraping it off. It comes back immediately! Indeed, it does little good to scrape it because that doesn’t get the growth from the pores; and it is this that is deadliest.”
“But, man alive, if this gets around to others—”
“That’s why I came here, instead of waiting for death at my home. To warn you. You must sequester everybody who went near that corpse — keep them quarantined as people have never been quarantined before. You must get hold of every one even thought to have contacted them. You—”
The commissioner’s phone rang. In the urgency of the physician’s visit, the commissioner was disposed not to bother to answer. But finally he did.
The homicide man whom the doctor had called to the Braun apartment was on the wire.
The detective was a brave man, too. He had shot it out with gunmen, risked bullets and knife-blades. But he wasn’t as brave, in the presence of a microscopic organism that looked like snow crystals, as the physician was.
He was screaming, was almost incoherent. He had gibbered into the phone for over a minute before the two got what he was driving at; though their intuition whispered the message to them before the detective’s words did.
The detective had suddenly remembered, a few minutes before, that he had touched the corpse, too. He had just barely brushed it with the back of his hand. So he had gotten up from bed and turned on the light.
His hand and wrist and part of his forearm looked as if unseen hands had gently sifted powdered sugar over them.
CHAPTER VI
Crossed Trails
Sangaman, broken fugitive from the law, stared out the window of his retreat.
Veshnir’s Maine cabin, so kindly put to his use, was an elaborate place. Log cabin it might be; but it was two stories tall, contained eight rooms and two baths, and had its own electric plant including water pump.
It was in about the center of the thousand or so acres of almost virgin Maine woods that went with it. No soul was in that area, save for Sangaman himself. You couldn’t see a hundred yards clear in any direction because of the thick trees. About a mile to the east was the seacoast; but along here the coast was as deserted as the woods.
It was the perfect hideout for — a murderer.
Sangaman, staring absently out the window, had aged ten years in the hours succeeding the murder of Targill. He had been a rich man, respected, prominent in business and society. Now he was a hunted thing, with only a little in cash that he had managed to withdraw secretly before he fled.
His brain had cleared a bit, and he was pretty sure, now, that he had not murdered Targill. Still, he could not swear that he had not done it.
But if he had not — then who had? There were two theories to follow that. One was that some employee had sneaked into the laboratory, unknown to the others, and killed Targill. The other was that Veshnir had done it!
The first must be discounted because Veshnir had vehemently maintained that he had seen Sangaman attack Targill.
The latter appealed most to logic.
But there was no sense in Veshnir’s killing Targill. There was, it seemed, no motive. Also, if Veshnir had done it, and framed it on him, why wouldn’t he turn Sangaman over to the police instead of hiding him up here in this wilderness? That didn’t make sense, either.
Guiltless or guilty, Veshnir had hidden him. And hidden he would remain till something, somehow, broke on the Targill case. In police custody, he was doomed. Free, he still had a chance.
Back in New York, in a fine Park Avenue apartment, a girl was reading about Sangaman. The girl was tall and slender and had chestnut hair. Her face, though youthful and feminine, was slightly like Sangaman’s sensitive face. And that was natural enough, for she was Sangaman’s daughter, Claudette.
She read with horror: Targill, head chemist at the Sangaman-Veshnir Drug Corp., murdered. Thomas Sangaman missing. His partner Veshnir, loyally denying that Sangaman was in the building that night, although the building employees stated otherwise. Sangaman’s fingerprints found on the murder weapon.
A little moan came from Claudette’s lips. This was her father they were talking about! Her father — a killer! It was impossible! She must prove otherwise. But how? The police were no aid. They had already judged her father guilty. Who, then, could she go to?
Claudette Sangaman was one of the rare few in private life who knew of The Avenger, and she knew that he specialized in giving just that kind of help: aid that the regular police could not or would not give.
Twenty-five minutes later she stood before the center door of The Avenger’s huge headquarters on Bleek Street. Over the door was a small sign in black and faded gilt. The sign had but one word on it:
JUSTICE
She went in, and up to the top floor after being passed by a small, lovely blond girl with sympathetic eyes. Claudette Sangaman gasped, as most people did, when they saw The Avenger.
The white, dead face was like a mask under her gaze. The icily flaming, colorless eyes bored into hers like diamond drills as she stumbled forth on her plea for help. Help to clear her father.
She was precisely the kind of person The Avenger lived to help. But this time she had come to him at a very unfortunate moment. The Avenger was deeply sympathetic, but his flashing brain was occupied to the exclusion of everything else by the case of John Braun.